The wording may seem almost trivial. Politically, however, it is far from it. This new unit is to be established within the Office for Equality and Opportunity, alongside units working specifically on issues relating to race, women’s rights, disability and LGBT+ people. By incorporating social class into this framework, the UK government is thus officially recognising that where one is born, one’s parents’ income, the neighbourhood in which one grows up, and a family’s social status are also major determinants of one’s life.
The Minister for Women and Equality, Bridget Phillipson, is clearly embracing this shift. In her view, the UK has for too long been reluctant to speak directly about social class. The new unit is to focus in particular on differences in educational attainment, access to employment, health, use of public services and, more broadly, the opportunities available depending on the environment in which a person grew up.
The issue becomes even more interesting when one considers one of the debates surrounding this announcement. According to The Guardian, the government wishes, in particular, to take better account of the situation of white working-class people, as certain UK educational indicators show particularly significant difficulties within some of these groups. Government officials stress, however, that the new body will not be a unit reserved for white Britons: its official remit covers class and income inequalities regardless of ethnic origin.
This distinction is fundamental. For behind what appears to be a technical administrative decision lies a political issue that has become highly contentious in many European countries: can we combat discrimination based on ethnicity, gender or minority status without giving a section of the working classes the impression that they have fallen off the political radar?
It is precisely on this ground that European populist and nationalist movements have been thriving for several years. They often claim that the traditional working classes have been abandoned by the political and cultural elites in favour of other groups considered to be priorities. The UK’s creation of a unit dedicated to the working class can thus be seen as an attempt to put social issues back at the centre of the debate without automatically pitting different sections of the population against one another.
Moreover, the reform is not merely symbolic. The ‘Class Unit’ is to oversee the implementation of a socio-economic duty enshrined in the Equality Act. The stated aim is to oblige public bodies to examine the impact of certain decisions – notably regarding transport, public services and budgets – on low-income households. At the same time, the government plans to close the Social Mobility Commission, an independent body hitherto responsible for studying social mobility, and to transfer some of its remit directly to the government.
It is precisely this latest decision that is drawing criticism. Officials from the commission set to be abolished believe that a body outside the government remains valuable precisely because it can analyse and critique public policies with greater independence. The government responds that the fight against inequality must no longer be confined to an observer body but must become a direct responsibility of ministers.
The debate extends far beyond the United Kingdom. In France, too, the vocabulary of social class has gradually lost the central place it once occupied in political life. We still talk about purchasing power, poverty, regions or socio-professional categories, but much less spontaneously about the ‘working class’ or the ‘class struggle ’. At the same time, economic divides have obviously not disappeared: housing, access to the grandes écoles, wealth, health, mobility and life expectancy remain closely linked to social background.
There is therefore something strangely contemporary about this British decision: in order to devise a new equality policy, London is dusting off one of the oldest terms in the modern political vocabulary. Class.
And perhaps that is where the real novelty lies. After decades during which some proclaimed the disappearance of social classes, these may simply have continued to exist whilst we had stopped naming them.
